CHAPTER XV.

1680.

INDIAN CONQUERORS.

The Enterprise renewed.--Attempt to rescue Tonty.--Buffalo.--A

Frightful Discovery.--Iroquois Fury.--The Ruined Town.--A Night of

Horror.--Traces of the Invaders.--No News of Tonty.

[Sidenote: ANOTHER EFFORT.]

And now La Salle's work must be begun afresh. He had staked all, and all

had seemingly been lost. In stern, relentless effort he had touched the

limits of human endurance; and the harvest of his toil was

disappointment, disaster, and impending ruin. The shattered fabric of

his enterprise was prostrate in the dust. His friends desponded; his

foes were blatant and exultant. Did he bend before the storm? No human

eye could pierce the depths of his reserved and haughty nature; but the

surface was calm, and no sign betrayed a shaken resolve or an altered

purpose. Where weaker men would have abandoned all in despairing apathy,

he turned anew to his work with the same vigor and the same apparent

confidence as if borne on the full tide of success.

His best hope was in Tonty. Could that brave and true-hearted officer

and the three or four faithful men who had remained with him make good

their foothold on the Illinois, and save from destruction the vessel on

the stocks and the forge and tools so laboriously carried thither, then

a basis was left on which the ruined enterprise might be built up once

more. There was no time to lose. Tonty must be succored soon, or succor

would come too late. La Salle had already provided the necessary

material, and a few days sufficed to complete his preparations. On the

tenth of August he embarked again for the Illinois. With him went his

lieutenant La Forest, who held of him in fief an island, then called

Belle Isle, opposite Fort Frontenac.[172] A surgeon, ship-carpenters,

joiners, masons, soldiers, _voyageurs_ and laborers completed his

company, twenty-five men in all, with everything needful for the outfit

of the vessel.

His route, though difficult, was not so long as that which he had

followed the year before. He ascended the river Humber; crossed to Lake

Simcoe, and thence descended the Severn to the Georgian Bay of Lake

Huron; followed its eastern shore, coasted the Manitoulin Islands, and

at length reached Michilimackinac. Here, as usual, all was hostile; and

he had great difficulty in inducing the Indians, who had been excited

against him, to sell him provisions. Anxious to reach his destination,

he pushed forward with twelve men, leaving La Forest to bring on the

rest. On the fourth of November[173] he reached the ruined fort at the

mouth of the St. Joseph, and left five of his party, with the heavy

stores, to wait till La Forest should come up, while he himself hastened

forward with six Frenchmen and an Indian. A deep anxiety possessed him.

The rumor, current for months past, that the Iroquois, bent on

destroying the Illinois, were on the point of invading their country had

constantly gained strength. Here was a new disaster, which, if realized,

might involve him and his enterprise in irretrievable wreck.

He ascended the St. Joseph, crossed the portage to the Kankakee, and

followed its course downward till it joined the northern branch of the

Illinois. He had heard nothing of Tonty on the way, and neither here nor

elsewhere could he discover the smallest sign of the passage of white

men. His friend, therefore, if alive, was probably still at his post;

and he pursued his course with a mind lightened, in some small measure,

of its load of anxiety.

[Sidenote: BUFFALO.]

When last he had passed here, all was solitude; but now the scene was

changed. The boundless waste was thronged with life. He beheld that

wondrous spectacle, still to be seen at times on the plains of the

remotest West, and the memory of which can quicken the pulse and stir

the blood after the lapse of years: far and near, the prairie was alive

with buffalo; now like black specks dotting the distant swells; now

trampling by in ponderous columns, or filing in long lines, morning,

noon, and night, to drink at the river,--wading, plunging, and snorting

in the water; climbing the muddy shores, and staring with wild eyes at

the passing canoes. It was an opportunity not to be lost. The party

landed, and encamped for a hunt. Sometimes they hid under the shelving

bank, and shot them as they came to drink; sometimes, flat on their

faces, they dragged themselves through the long dead grass, till the

savage bulls, guardians of the herd, ceased their grazing, raised their

huge heads, and glared through tangled hair at the dangerous intruders.

The hunt was successful. In three days the hunters killed twelve

buffalo, besides deer, geese, and swans. They cut the meat into thin

flakes, and dried it in the sun or in the smoke of their fires. The men

were in high spirits,--delighting in the sport, and rejoicing in the

prospect of relieving Tonty and his hungry followers with a plentiful

supply.

They embarked again, and soon approached the great town of the Illinois.

The buffalo were far behind; and once more the canoes glided on their

way through a voiceless solitude. No hunters were seen; no saluting

whoop greeted their ears. They passed the cliff afterwards called the

Rock of St. Louis, where La Salle had ordered Tonty to build his

stronghold; but as he scanned its lofty top he saw no palisades, no

cabins, no sign of human hand, and still its primeval crest of forests

overhung the gliding river. Now the meadow opened before them where the

great town had stood. They gazed, astonished and confounded: all was

desolation. The town had vanished, and the meadow was black with fire.

They plied their paddles, hastened to the spot, landed; and as they

looked around their cheeks grew white, and the blood was frozen in their

veins.

[Sidenote: A NIGHT OF HORROR.]

Before them lay a plain once swarming with wild human life and covered

with Indian dwellings, now a waste of devastation and death, strewn with

heaps of ashes, and bristling with the charred poles and stakes which

had formed the framework of the lodges. At the points of most of them

were stuck human skulls, half picked by birds of prey.[174] Near at hand

was the burial-ground of the village. The travellers sickened with

horror as they entered its revolting precincts. Wolves in multitudes

fled at their approach; while clouds of crows or buzzards, rising from

the hideous repast, wheeled above their heads, or settled on the naked

branches of the neighboring forest. Every grave had been rifled, and the

bodies flung down from the scaffolds where, after the Illinois custom,

many of them had been placed. The field was strewn with broken bones and

torn and mangled corpses. A hyena warfare had been waged against the

dead. La Salle knew the handiwork of the Iroquois. The threatened blow

had fallen, and the wolfish hordes of the five cantons had fleshed their

rabid fangs in a new victim.[175]

Not far distant, the conquerors had made a rude fort of trunks, boughs,

and roots of trees laid together to form a circular enclosure; and this,

too, was garnished with skulls, stuck on the broken branches and

protruding sticks. The _caches_, or subterranean store-houses of the

villagers, had been broken open and the contents scattered. The

cornfields were laid waste, and much of the corn thrown into heaps and

half burned. As La Salle surveyed this scene of havoc, one thought

engrossed him: where were Tonty and his men? He searched the Iroquois

fort: there were abundant traces of its savage occupants, and, among

them, a few fragments of French clothing. He examined the skulls; but

the hair, portions of which clung to nearly all of them, was in every

case that of an Indian. Evening came on before he had finished the

search. The sun set, and the wilderness sank to its savage rest. Night

and silence brooded over the waste, where, far as the raven could wing

his flight, stretched the dark domain of solitude and horror.

Yet there was no silence at the spot where La Salle and his companions

made their bivouac. The howling of the wolves filled the air with fierce

and dreary dissonance. More dangerous foes were not far off, for before

nightfall they had seen fresh Indian tracks; "but, as it was very cold,"

says La Salle, "this did not prevent us from making a fire and lying

down by it, each of us keeping watch in turn. I spent the night in a

distress which you can imagine better than I can write it; and I did not

sleep a moment with trying to make up my mind as to what I ought to do.

My ignorance as to the position of those I was looking after, and my

uncertainty as to what would become of the men who were to follow me

with La Forest if they arrived at the ruined village and did not find me

there, made me apprehend every sort of trouble and disaster. At last, I

decided to keep on my way down the river, leaving some of my men behind

in charge of the goods, which it was not only useless but dangerous to

carry with me, because we should be forced to abandon them when the

winter fairly set in, which would be very soon."

[Sidenote: FEARS FOR TONTY.]

This resolution was due to a discovery he had made the evening before,

which offered, as he thought, a possible clew to the fate of Tonty and

the men with him. He thus describes it: "Near the garden of the Indians,

which was on the meadows, a league from the village and not far from the

river, I found six pointed stakes set in the ground and painted red. On

each of them was the figure of a man with bandaged eyes, drawn in black.

As the savages often set stakes of this sort where they have killed

people, I thought, by their number and position, that when the Iroquois

came, the Illinois, finding our men alone in the hut near their garden,

had either killed them or made them prisoners. And I was confirmed in

this, because, seeing no signs of a battle, I supposed that on hearing

of the approach of the Iroquois, the old men and other non-combatants

had fled, and that the young warriors had remained behind to cover their

flight, and afterwards followed, taking the French with them; while the

Iroquois, finding nobody to kill, had vented their fury on the corpses

in the graveyard."

Uncertain as was the basis of this conjecture, and feeble as was the

hope it afforded, it determined him to push forward, in order to learn

more. When daylight returned, he told his purpose to his followers, and

directed three of them to await his return near the ruined village. They

were to hide themselves on an island, conceal their fire at night, make

no smoke by day, fire no guns, and keep a close watch. Should the rest

of the party arrive, they, too, were to wait with similar precautions.

The baggage was placed in a hollow of the rocks, at a place difficult of

access; and, these arrangements made, La Salle set out on his perilous

journey with the four remaining men, Dautray, Hunaut, You, and the

Indian. Each was armed with two guns, a pistol, and a sword; and a

number of hatchets and other goods were placed in the canoe, as presents

for Indians whom they might meet.

Several leagues below the village they found, on their right hand close

to the river, a sort of island, made inaccessible by the marshes and

water which surrounded it. Here the flying Illinois had sought refuge

with their women and children, and the place was full of their deserted

huts. On the left bank, exactly opposite, was an abandoned camp of the

Iroquois. On the level meadow stood a hundred and thirteen huts, and on

the forest trees which covered the hills behind were carved the totems,

or insignia, of the chiefs, together with marks to show the number of

followers which each had led to the war. La Salle counted five hundred

and eighty-two warriors. He found marks, too, for the Illinois killed or

captured, but none to indicate that any of the Frenchmen had shared

their fate.

[Sidenote: SEARCH FOR TONTY.]

As they descended the river, they passed, on the same day, six abandoned

camps of the Illinois; and opposite to each was a camp of the invaders.

The former, it was clear, had retreated in a body; while the Iroquois

had followed their march, day by day, along the other bank. La Salle and

his men pushed rapidly onward, passed Peoria Lake, and soon reached Fort

Crèvecoeur, which they found, as they expected, demolished by the

deserters. The vessel on the stocks was still left entire, though the

Iroquois had found means to draw out the iron nails and spikes. On one

of the planks were written the words: "_Nous sommes tous sauvages: ce

15, 1680_,"--the work, no doubt, of the knaves who had pillaged and

destroyed the fort.

La Salle and his companions hastened on, and during the following day

passed four opposing camps of the savage armies. The silence of death

now reigned along the deserted river, whose lonely borders, wrapped deep

in forests, seemed lifeless as the grave. As they drew near the mouth of

the stream they saw a meadow on their right, and on its farthest verge

several human figures, erect, yet motionless. They landed, and

cautiously examined the place. The long grass was trampled down, and all

around were strewn the relics of the hideous orgies which formed the

ordinary sequel of an Iroquois victory. The figures they had seen were

the half-consumed bodies of women, still bound to the stakes where they

had been tortured. Other sights there were, too revolting for

record.[176] All the remains were those of women and children. The men,

it seemed, had fled, and left them to their fate.

Here, again, La Salle sought long and anxiously, without finding the

smallest sign that could indicate the presence of Frenchmen. Once more

descending the river, they soon reached its mouth. Before them, a broad

eddying current rolled swiftly on its way; and La Salle beheld the

Mississippi,--the object of his day-dreams, the destined avenue of his

ambition and his hopes. It was no time for reflections. The moment was

too engrossing, too heavily charged with anxieties and cares. From a

rock on the shore, he saw a tree stretched forward above the stream; and

stripping off its bark to make it more conspicuous, he hung upon it a

board on which he had drawn the figures of himself and his men, seated

in their canoe, and bearing a pipe of peace. To this he tied a letter

for Tonty, informing him that he had returned up the river to the ruined

village.

His four men had behaved admirably throughout, and they now offered to

continue the journey if he saw fit, and follow him to the sea; but he

thought it useless to go farther, and was unwilling to abandon the three

men whom he had ordered to await his return. Accordingly, they retraced

their course, and, paddling at times both day and night, urged their

canoe so swiftly that they reached the village in the incredibly short

space of four days.[177]

[Sidenote: THE COMET.]

The sky was clear, and as night came on the travellers saw a prodigious

comet blazing above this scene of desolation. On that night, it was

chilling with a superstitious awe the hamlets of New England and the

gilded chambers of Versailles; but it is characteristic of La Salle,

that, beset as he was with perils and surrounded with ghastly images of

death, he coolly notes down the phenomenon, not as a portentous

messenger of war and woe, but rather as an object of scientific

curiosity.[178]

He found his three men safely ensconced upon their island, where they

were anxiously looking for his return. After collecting a store of

half-burnt corn from the ravaged granaries of the Illinois, the whole

party began to ascend the river, and on the sixth of January reached the

junction of the Kankakee with the northern branch. On their way downward

they had descended the former stream; they now chose the latter, and

soon discovered, by the margin of the water, a rude cabin of bark. La

Salle landed and examined the spot, when an object met his eye which

cheered him with a bright gleam of hope. It was but a piece of wood; but

the wood had been cut with a saw. Tonty and his party, then, had passed

this way, escaping from the carnage behind them. Unhappily, they had

left no token of their passage at the fork of the two streams; and thus

La Salle, on his voyage downward, had believed them to be still on the

river below.

With rekindled hope, the travellers pursued their journey, leaving their

canoes, and making their way overland towards the fort on the St.

Joseph.

"Snow fell in extraordinary quantities all day," writes La Salle, "and

it kept on falling for nineteen days in succession, with cold so severe

that I never knew so hard a winter, even in Canada. We were obliged to

cross forty leagues of open country, where we could hardly find wood to

warm ourselves at evening, and could get no bark whatever to make a hut,

so that we had to spend the night exposed to the furious winds which

blow over these plains. I never suffered so much from cold, or had more

trouble in getting forward; for the snow was so light, resting suspended

as it were among the tall grass, that we could not use snow-shoes.

Sometimes it was waist deep; and as I walked before my men, as usual, to

encourage them by breaking the path, I often had much ado, though I am

rather tall, to lift my legs above the drifts, through which I pushed

by the weight of my body."

[Sidenote: FORT MIAMI.]

At length they reached their goal, and found shelter and safety within

the walls of Fort Miami. Here was the party left in charge of La Forest;

but, to his surprise and grief, La Salle heard no tidings of Tonty. He

found some amends for the disappointment in the fidelity and zeal of La

Forest's men, who had restored the fort, cleared ground for planting,

and even sawed the planks and timber for a new vessel on the lake.

And now, while La Salle rests at Fort Miami, let us trace the adventures

which befell Tonty and his followers, after their chief's departure from

Fort Crèvecoeur.

FOOTNOTES:

[172] _Robert Cavelier, Sr. de la Salle, à François Daupin, Sr. de

la Forest, 10 Juin, 1679._

[173] This date is from the _Relation_. Membré says the twenty-eighth;

but he is wrong, by his own showing, as he says that the party reached

the Illinois village on the first of December, which would be an

impossibility.

[174] "Il ne restoit que quelques bouts de perches brulées qui

montroient quelle avoit été l'étendue du village, et sur la plupart

desquelles il y avoit des têtes de morts plantées et mangées des

corbeaux."--_Relation des Découvertes du Sr. de la Salle._

[175] "Beaucoup de carcasses à demi rongées par les loups, les

sépulchres démolis, les os tirés de leurs fosses et épars par la

campagne; ... enfin les loups et les corbeaux augmentoient encore par

leurs hurlemens et par leurs cris l'horreur de ce spectacle."--_Relation

des Découvertes du Sr. de la Salle._

The above may seem exaggerated; but it accords perfectly with what is

well established concerning the ferocious character of the Iroquois and

the nature of their warfare. Many other tribes have frequently made war

upon the dead. I have myself known an instance in which five corpses of

Sioux Indians placed in trees, after the practice of the Western bands

of that people, were thrown down and kicked into fragments by a war

party of the Crows, who then held the muzzles of their guns against the

skulls, and blew them to pieces. This happened near the head of the

Platte, in the summer of 1846. Yet the Crows are much less ferocious

than were the Iroquois in La Salle's time.

[176] "On ne sçauroit exprimer la rage de ces furieux ni les tourmens

qu'ils avoient fait souffrir aux misérables Tamaroa [_a tribe of the

Illinois_]. Il y en avoit encore dans des chaudières qu'ils avoient

laissées pleines sur les feux, qui depuis s'étoient éteints," etc.,

etc.--_Relation des Découvertes._

[177] The distance is about two hundred and fifty miles. The letters of

La Salle, as well as the official narrative compiled from them, say that

they left the village on the second of December, and returned to it on

the eleventh, having left the mouth of the river on the seventh.

[178] This was the "Great Comet of 1680." Dr. B. A. Gould writes me: "It

appeared in December, 1680, and was visible until the latter part of

February, 1681, being especially brilliant in January." It was said to

be the largest ever seen. By observations upon it, Newton demonstrated

the regular revolutions of comets around the sun. "No comet," it is

said, "has threatened the earth with a nearer approach than that of

1680." (_Winthrop on Comets, Lecture II_. p. 44.) Increase Mather, in

his _Discourse concerning Comets_, printed at Boston in 1683, says of

this one: "Its appearance was very terrible; the Blaze ascended above 60

Degrees almost to its Zenith." Mather thought it fraught with terrific

portent to the nations of the earth.